WVU baseball: LSU long balls bury Mountaineers in super regional opener

Adding grand slams in the fifth and sixth innings, the Tigers moved ahead 16-5, making West Virginia's rally attempts moot.

WVU had success against LSU starter Kade Anderson from the beginning. Armani Guzman set the tone with a 10-pitch at bat to start the game. WVU scored first as Sam White singled in the second and scored on a Jace Rinehart RBI groundout, and WVU put together several strong at-bats and had Anderson on the ropes early.

After Kirn gave up the three-run homer in the fourth, he walked the leadoff batter to start the fifth, and that was the end of his day, having thrown 82 pitches and only 47 for strikes one batter into the fifth. Both coaches felt Kirn was out of gas, but unfortunately for WVU, that was the end of its quality pitching for the day.

Five WVU relievers walked seven batters, hit two more and allowed 12 earned runs over the final four innings.

“It was more about the crispness of the pitches," WVU coach Steve Sabins said of the decision to lift Kirn. "We felt as a staff that we would be better off going to somebody else. We had some players throughout the season make these big jumps, and so there's always some risk. We felt some of these pitchers have been really, really great throughout some smaller outings, some shorter outings, some sim games. We think they're ready to compete at the highest level. And they certainly are. It didn't go their way this week, but when you trail in the game, there's always some balance of making sure that you go to win the game, but also that you have enough arms to compete and win a series.�

West Virginia worked to climb back into the game down 10-1 going into the sixth and showed some fight. Kyle West and White hit singles and Skylar King roped a one-out, two-RBI single into left-center. Two batters later, King scored on a Chase Swain single. Rinehart drew a 10-pitch walk and scored on a throwing error as LSU tried to turn a double play on a Brodie Kresser grounder.

The Tigers ended any thought of another WVU rally by plating six more runs in their half of the sixth, including a second grand slam. That came over a stretch in which West Virginia relievers not find the strike zone with any consistency. Mountaineers pitchers threw strikes on just 51.3% of their 189 offerings.

West Virginia continued to work at the plate, with Gavin Kelly stroking a two-run homer in the seventh and West another in the ninth, but that accounted for just four runs on Mountaineers home runs against LSU's 11.

White and Kelly finished with three hits each for WVU, with West, Kelly and King each driving in two runs as the Mountaineers produced 11 hits.

“I’m proud of the guys,� Sabins said. “Kept fighting throughout the entire game. We put up a two-spot in the ninth when we were trailing by a significant margin. We had 11 hits, really competed well against a high-end pitcher, one of the best in the country. I thought our offense did a really nice job.�

Game 1 of the super regional is set for Sunday, with first pitch scheduled for just after 6 p.m. ESPN2 and ESPN+ are scheduled to carry the action, with West Virginia playing as the home team.